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    Monday, December 11, 2006

    Lemon Tarts and Coconut Cake

    Lana was the host for the Monthly Family Lunch.
    The second Sunday of Summer another lovely day.
    She served a wonderful retro meal
    Gazpacho - Shrimp Cocktail - Quiche


    Helen made a wonderful Coconut Cake for dessert.
    While in Rarotonga one of the restaurants served a Coconut Cake as a dessert.
    She was very impressed and has adapted a recipe from Nigella Lawson
    adding her own coconut frosting.




    It was delicious. Look pretty good to doesn't it.?

    This is how you make it
    225g unsalted butter, softened
    225g castor sugar
    12 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
    4 large eggs
    200g self-raising flour
    25g cornflour
    ½ teaspoon baking powder
    50g desiccated coconut, soaked in 150ml boiling water


    Prepare 2 x 21cm sandwich tins, buttered and lined
    Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius

    Make the cake by putting all the ingredients in the food processor and blitzing until you have a soft batter.

    Pour into the prepared tins and cook for about 25 minutes or until ready; not so springy on top as a plain sponge, but still coming away from the edges; a cake tester, inserted should come out cleanish.

    Sandwich together with a little of the cream cheese frosting and then ice the top too.

    Malibu Cream Cheese Icing (Helen’s Adaptation)
    25g soft butter
    180g cream cheese
    375g icing
    25g desiccated coconut, toasted
    4 tablespoons Malibu liqueur

    3 tablespoons desiccated coconut, toasted (extra)

    Beat the butter until it’s really soft and creamy. Add the cream cheese, beat until smooth. Add the icing sugar, coconut and Malibu and beat until smooth.

    Use some of the icing to sandwich the cake together and the remaining icing for the top of the cake … sprinkle the top with the extra toasted desiccated coconut.
    Beautiful served with Honey Greek Yoghurt

    Now onto the divine Lemon Curd.
    Paula Deen from Food TV inspired me to make these lovely mini
    tarts which you fill with the following
    Lemon Curd

    1 cup sugar
    Zest and juice of 3 lemons
    4 whole eggs
    115 gms butter melted


    Place sugar, lemon juice & zest and eggs into food processor and whiz
    Slowly pour in melted butter and continue to pulse till well blended

    Put into double boiler and cook till it thickens and coats the back of a spoon.
    Paula said 3 minutes but I thought more like 6-7
    Pour into container and cool in fridge.
    This will keep for over a week in the fridge.
    Now you need little shells to put it in.

    Heat your oven to 170C (fan bake)
    and make the following
    This pastry is dead easy.

    1 cup flour
    85 gms cream cheese
    115 gms cold butter chopped up


    Everything into the food processor
    Pulse till it forms a ball
    Push together
    Wrap in plastic wrap chill about an hour
    This makes about 24 mini tarts.

    Rip into small pieces and roll into little balls
    Put balls in mini muffin tins and press down with a shot glass
    dusted with flour to stop it sticking
    Using your finger press the side up to cover the little tins


    Bake at 170 fan bake oven for 20 minutes. Turn out onto rack like so and cool



    I filled 6 tarts for the children with Ganache for their dessert and put the remainder of the shells in a airtight container.


    Chocolate Ganache
    Simply put equal amounts of cold chocolate broken up with just boiling cream.
    Let sit for a couple of minutes and whisk to combine.
    Cool
    Simple and rich as!!!



    Look at those little Chocolate Mint Leaves.
    (Courtesy of Paula Deen)
    This is gorgeous and very easy
    Simply melt some good chocolate in a double boiler
    Dip the fresh mint leaves in the chocolate using tweezers
    Place on waxed paper and place in fridge to harden
    You now have you own after dinner mints


    This morning I filled the rest of the little shells with the curd
    Took them into work...A huge hit with the staff

    2 comments:

    Lisa Johnson said...

    Those lemon curd tarts look so good! And the cake - yum!

    So So Simple said...

    I am going to do something different with the lemon curd and the ganache for the staff party on Friday I will post on Saturday.
    It should be a good party.